STRICTLY COME DANCING: SHE-DEVILS ON HEELS

After the men’s poor showing last week, everyone is looking forward to what the ladies (PS stop calling them “girls”, Brucie you old dinosaur) can do. And speaking of Brucie, is it just me or have his scripted links to camera become even more incoherent, garbled, unfunny etc etc than ever before, such that I find myself grinding my teeth whenever he appears on screen? (some of his ad libs are still quite funny, mind you)

BOOBWATCH: Tess wears a strapless green number, which is not bad, but the highly pleated bodice makes it look a bit as if her boobs are made of paper mache. The fabric on the one she wears for the results show looks like old Christmas wrapping paper and has a weird sticky out bit along the neck line, as though a bit of the hem has become unstitched.

I lied last week and said they are doing the foxtrot and the rumba, when actually it is the quickstep and the rumba. The quickstep is the one where they charge from corner to corner of the floor and then do flappery type foot moves, the rumba is the boring one where the woman points to the ceiling and tries to look sensuous while the man writhes around her and rubs his thighs a la Vic Reeves and the judges argue whether it is supposed to be romantic or slutty.

STEPHANIE BEACHAM AND VINCENT SIMONE

There is a hilarious clip of Stephanie with giant hair as Sable Colby, giving Joan Collins a well deserved choking on Dynasty, and also of her being camp and bossy to creepy lothario Vincent. She has to do the quickstep in a bacofoil dress and does pretty well, even though it is to a dreadfully unsuitable KT Tunstall song – I really don’t understand why they do these period type dances to modern songs, it must be much easier to do it to a 1920s sounding song. Everyone says she has charisma and glamour (TRU!!) but needs to be lighter on her feet and she gets mainly 6s.

SHAZZA OFF EE AND DARREN BENNETT

Shazza worries about her looks compared to glamazons such as Penny, Alesha and Kelly and who can blame her. Darren seems nice and a good laugh as always. She does the rumba in an unflattering blue dress draped with netting and is OK but not brilliant. The producers have decided to try and draw attention away from Shazza's ample top half by getting her to wave her very shapely legs about, but all you think is: "Hmm...nice legs...Russian tractor driver shoulders...wonder if we're related?"

I have seen a lot worse anyway. The judges say they are too restrained and need to go out and get drunk together. They still get average marks.

KATE GARRAWAY AND ANTON “MADE UP NAME” DU BEQUE

When Kate appears, I hope they will pan down and reveal that her feet have been replaced by robotic limbs or roller skates or something but no such luck. She moans about her feet a lot and how it has messed up her training and then does a quickstep to Love Machine (see above re unsuitable modern songs). It is pretty bad. All the steps seem to take Kate by surprise, Anton is visibly dragging her round half the time and when they reach the bit between the flappering and the trotting, they just seem to stand there and mill around aimlessly. All the judges are very mean (with many references to laughing stock Fiona Phillips) and Craig gives her 2 points! The rest give her 4 and 5s. Anton is relieved that their first score is higher than Fiona Phillips. I can just imagine Fiona Phillips sat at home watching the show, drinking neat vodka out of the bottle and swearing blearily at the TV.

ALESHA DIXON AND MATTHEW

I love Alesha, she seems like she would be really good fun to go out with and I love her dirty laugh. Also she is a stunner! She is doing the rumba and wears a sparkly red dress that barely contains her bosoms. Unsurprisingly she is very good, looks great and puts in a convincing performance of Mills & Boon style emotion as the dance requires. I really hope she goes far in the competition. The judges compare her to “Salome” and “a gazelle” and she gets mainly 8s. Hurrah!

PENNY LANCASTER STEWART AND IAN

I was irrationally inclined to dislike Penny but she seems nice enough and quite down to earth. I think it's because we disliked the former Mrs Stewart so much on Make me a Supermodel; and after all, they're both tall blondes married to Rod Stewart, so it's easy to mix them up.

There is a hilarious shot of her in her LA mansion rehearsing while her dad sits there watching in his vest and trakkie bottoms. Class. She is mega tall (as is her partner) and looks great with her posh green dress, up-hairdo etc. Rod Stewart is watching and has a mysterious black eye. Hmmm. She does a quickstep to proper 1920s sounding music – hurrah - and is pretty good, skipping elegantly round the room, and looking like a bona fide Noel Coward character. I think the band like her too because the singers growl: "Go Penny Go!" just before the middle eight. The judges all love her (Bruno says something about “ecstasy” – perhaps that he is on it) and she gets 8s and a 9 – wowsa!

KELLY BROOK AND THAT C***FARMER BRENDAN

Kelly is not quite as stunning in close up as she was last week and does not seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she is giggly and harmless, and still v beautiful. Brendan is so in awe of her hottness that he almost forgets to be a dickhead. Well I never. Then he mentions that he has to remind himself not to stare at her breasts all the time. Oh well. There is no close-up of Billy Zane polishing a knuckle duster and we are disappointed.

They dance the rumba to a song off Dirty Dancing, which is a bit too obvious for my liking, with Kelly in a high necked gold sparkly dress and pony tail. She is very good (even coping with a stray bit of fringe getting caught on her heel) and looks fantastic and the judges all love her. She gets 8s and a 9 and is now joint first with Penny!

GABBY LOGAN AND IAN

Ian was a right prat last series, but he says he will be nicer this series as Gabby is making an effort to be good, unlike the lazy slut he got landed with last year. The Guardianistas call him "Wolverine", and I think I can see why (ed: he has an adamantium skeleton?).

I think Gabby will be replacing Carol Smilie as the slightly underachieving joyless swot this series, as she goes on about how competitive she is. She does a quickstep to Dean/Nancy’s Things, wearing a red dress. The routine looks quite difficult and complex and Gabby does quite well. The judges are vaguely complimentary and give her 7s and 8s – which would be very good on any series apart from this one. Gabby says tight lippedly that she did it better in rehearsal and probably goes off screen and starts self harming or something to punish herself.

THE MEN’S GROUP DANCE

This is supposed to be a merengue but it's more like a hopeless farrago, as they start dancing to a latin tune that then morphs into the Jackson 5. The choreography is all over the place. Stand out moments = a blatant incident of jazz hands and Dominic playing girl dancers’ bottoms like bongos. WTF?? Willy looks like he will struggle with latin. Kenny is as terrible and clunky as last week, Matt and Gethin are improved, Dominic is still annoying and John still looks like he is enjoying himself and is not bad. The judges tell them that they are all doomed. Doomed, I say!!

THE RESULTS SHOW

This is full of filler and a huge waste of time (especially when sodding Westlife show up). The men even do their retarded group dance again and it makes no more sense than it did the night before. The only good bit is when the Professional Dancers strut their stuff to a medley of songs from Chicago. Finally the actual results come on and – gasp – to everyone’s shock horror, Kate is through. Damn you GMTV viewers and your sympathy votes. Stephanie and Shazza have to dance off and Stephanie is much the same, but Shazza puts a bit more over acting into her performance and gets through. Stephanie is v gracious about the whole thing and makes “I’m too old for this shit anyway” type noises. What a shame, she was good value on the show.

Next week it is the tango and the jive, which both have much scope for hilarity. I am guessing that Kenny or Willy will be going home, esp if they both have to jive….

STRICTLY COME DANCING V! WAR OF THE LOGANS

It seems like only yesterday when we were praising lovely Ramps to the skies, and here we are again, with a whole new bunch of slebs to slag.

This week we're only seeing the men...uh...perform. Which is good for Kate Garraway because she's been working her feet so hard, they've rebelled and swollen to the point where she could easily don a periwig and play George IV in the GMTV Xmas Regency Revels. I know this because Ceej's childminder watches GMTV in the mornings, and we've been treated to regular updates and explanations of tendonitis with X-rays from Dr Hilary Jones all bloody week. Well, at least she has lovely Anton for a partner.

None of the men particularly stand out as being super skill from the start this year, like Lovely Mark Ramprakash and Colin Jackson did in previous years. Could this be a year for the ladies?

BOOBWATCH: Tess has them firmly strapped down this week, but what's with the plastic cummerbund?

BEANO and FLAVIA

We all know and not-quite-love-not-quite-despise Beano from our Easties days. He's quite cute with stubble, and says that learning to dance might help him pull. Flavia says that he'll need all his acting skillz to create the right atmosphere. She's obviously never seen Eastenders - I don't think there is a dance that requires one to snivel damply in a public toilet. He does OK with the cha-cha-cha. Bit nervous and over-concerned with getting his steps right but he might improve when he relaxes a bit and gets over his nerves.

CORRIE BADDIE AND KAREN

Karen won last year, so this year she gets the no-hoper. That doesn't stop her being grimly perky about the whole fandango (they don't do the fandango, do they?) Former Corrie Baddie Brian Capron tries to tell us that he's done other stuff than Corrie, but they play his best Corrie psycho scenes anyway. Though anybody who tries to off Gail Tilsley can't possibly be all that bad in my book. He's...ummm...not that great, but game enough. Sadly he ends up in the bottom two and has to "dance off" vs Kenny Logan. The judges dump him. How I will miss Karen's mad facial expressions and naked emotion this series.

DOMINIC LITTLEWOOD AND LILIA

Professional cockernee who possibly does some daytime property programme. Anyway, Sarah is reminded of an Arthur Rackham pixie, and not in a good way. He's pretty light on his feet and gets through with his OTT performance - he basically leers a lot and sexually harrasses Lilia to a latin beat. The judges praise his "big personality" (a polite way of saying he's annoying) but that won't help with the ballroom dances, methinks.

GETHIN JONES AND CAMILLA DALLERUP

Now this is a bit weird because Sarah knows a girl called Gethan, but this is Gethin with an I, and he's a chap. He appears to be the John Noakes one on Blue Peter. Apparently he's rather hunky - Sarah doesn't see it but Mark does, oh yes. Anyway, he's godawful (but fills out his shiny purple cha cha cha shirt very nicely) and as Craig Upper-Norwood says, he'll need the teeny texter vote to keep him in unless he improves big time.

WILLIE THORNE AND ERIN "FACE OF" BOAG

Willie is an old snooker player apparently and everyone expects him to be rubbish. In your face, haytas! He gets the best waltz score of the night from the judges. I can't really see him being any good at latin, though. Bring on the jive!

JOHN BARNES AND NICOLE CUTLER

Awww...look at the big slab of yellow former football genius! He was so cute in that New Order video. Actually, he's pretty light on his feet and seems very jolly and to be having a good time. That enormous yellow blouse was a mistake though. Arlene tells him to stop eating all the pies and shape up. Craig provokes LOL's aplenty when he says that he likes a man with a bit of meat on his bones - a bit TMI there, Craig. John gets top marks of the night! Hurrah!

KENNY LOGAN AND OLA JORDAN

Oh, this is the COUPLES AT WAR! twist. Kenny is Mr Gabby Logan and also an ex scottish rugger player. He also has a huge Desperate Dan style chin. His waltz is pretty clumpy and graceless and he doesn't take the judge's criticism well. He improves a lot in the dance-off though and scrapes through to dance again.

THE LADIES GROUP SWING DANCE

It’s hard to tell who is any good in the group dance, but lovely Alesha Dixon (the girl who used to break it down and start shouting “boom shakka lacka!” in the middle of every Mis Teeq song), Stunner Kelly Brook (I’m not being sarcastic, she is really incredibly beautiful) though unfortunately she is stuck with cockfarmer Brendan as her partner, Gabby Logan and Mrs Rod “I’m a photographer too! Yes really!” Stewart all look they will do well. Bruno is going to run out of OTT metaphors to describe that lot. Stephanie Beacham adds camp value and I’m not sure how Shazza off EE will do - she seems to be trying to be bubbly and wacky to make up for her inferior looks/skillz. It’ll be fun to watch the wardrobe dept try to cope with her top heavy figure, anway. She looked like an apple on stilts on the Sunday show.

MARK'S TOP PREDICTIONS

Alesha and Kelly are my favourites to win so far, even though I barely saw them dance, plus I am liking John Barnes (and Gethin for Shallow And Obvious Reasons).

SARAH'S TOP PREDICTIONS

I think John Barnes is this year's stalking horse, and am also liking Dulwich Girlz Alesha and Kelly - despite having to mop up after a drooling spouse...

NEXT WEEK

The men do a group dance and the women dance individually, doing either the foxtrot (yay!) or the rumba (boo!) Will Kate Garraway's feet have fallen off by then? Tune in and see!

Most Haunted

The temperatures are dropping, and the nights are drawing in. Time for the TV Dinners team to stop stomping around London, singing Carmen, holidaying in exotic climes, and get back to the serious business of watching telly and knitting.

I had a few rows to knit while waiting for Saxondale to start: I didn't fancy watching rich people buy a house and fuck it up, so I flicked the remote to FTN's Most Haunted.

Pardon the pun, but I've been dying to watch Most Haunted after seeing the odd clip while surfing channels, so here was my chance. Until Steve Coogan's rather creepily accurate portrait of just about every music biz friend in my dad's address book, anyway.

Most Haunted is the Anti-Antiques Roadshow. Antiques Roadshow takes place during the day, and involves a group of experts in a nice old house, poring over various bits of old tut and talking about them. In Most Haunted, a team of 'experts' in paranormal phenomena walk around a nice old house at night, and talk a load of old tut about ghosties. They even film the whole thing in night vision, so they all look a bit spooky anyway, especially when you see their eyes in negative. Interestingly enough, Derek Acorah's eyes in night vision are pitch black. This, I think, is all the evidence we need that he is in fact Satan.

So here we are, on the lawn of a pretty little medieval manor house, which apparently has been a pub, a boarding school and a family home in its long and turbulent history. I'm sorry, but show me a house over 200 years old in the British Isles that doesn't have a long and turbulent history. That's what history is. Anyway, this long and turbulent history means that there are a lot of disturbed spirits running around the place. Or floating. Whatever it is that sprits do.

Firstly, Yvette Fielding. WHAT HAPPENED? Twenty years or so ago, she was a lovely, bubbly children's TV presenter with eye-scorching yellow jumpers and beautiful curly russet hair. Now she shops for crushed velvet frock coats at Goths R Us, and some demon hairdresser has transformed her tumbling locks into a bleached, straightened mulletty affair that wouldn't look odd on an ageing glam rocker. Yvette (whom Derek Acorah calls "Eveet"...eh?) no longer smiles. She looks grim. And slightly scared. What demon hold does Derek have over her and her loved ones that she is condemned to spend her fading years following him around old houses and going "eek!" at crucial moments?

So anyway, Yvette finds a few middle-aged chaps to talk about strange happenings (footsteps on the stairs, ghostly games of knock-down-ginger...you know the score). Then a 'historian' (I think he might have an A-level) gives a few gory facts: religious persecution (it's 700 years old ffs! Every manor house in the country was involved in some way!), pub brawls, small boys getting roasted over open fires... to whet our appetites before the ads.

After the ads a Parapsychologist - not even the University of Greenwich offers a course in parapsychology, and they're pretty desperate for students - waves a tricorder around and talks about temperature fluctuations.

The purpose of all this flannel is to soften us up for the appearance of the The Silver One himself. Derek Acorah even dresses dodgy. Slicked back silver hair, buttoned up black shirt, diamond ear stud...I almost expect him to start flogging Yvette a dodgy Jag or asking if I've had an accident that wasn't my fault recently. But instead he presses his fingers to his temples and looks troubled.

Derek: "I'm sensing damp...lots of damp"

It's an old house mate. They didn't do draught proofing in 1474.

Then he twitches and genuflects and says that there's a lot of Catholicism about. Well you know, that's what Catholics do, genuflect and say their Hail Mary's all day...no wonder Luther got bored and went to set up his own religion. Derek says there's a lady in white, and she hates her father. He then closes his eyes.

Derek: "I'm feeling my vision going away..."

A subtitle says that a young woman's Protestant lover was murdered by her catholic father in 157something. That's an "ooooh..." moment. For me it's an "oooh...Derek has a researcher..." moment.

The parapsychologist waves his tricorder and reports a drop in temperature. They're standing next to an open window. Derek babbles on about people drinking...Yvette hears a spooky whistle and the crew go off to investigate squeaky doors.

So, we've got a whistling white lady, a room full of drunkards, and...Derek gets "residual energy...thinking energy...like water being thrown over our shoulders..." Even Yvette can't resist a WTF look at this point.

Derek scurries off, apparently that's scurrying energy, saying that he's on the trail of two priests in hiding. Yep, well, it's an old house, and many country gentlefolk resisted the Reformation as best as they could, and there were a lot of deaths. Derek finds a priests' room, and 'sees' lots of blood. Oh, someone died then. Apparently one priest is angry, and the other one isn't. Well, maybe he doesn't like all the drunkard ghosts downstairs. And that white lady must be a bit of a pain too.

Another sweatier and obviously lesser psychic joins them as the producers get bored and switch the camera to night vision, and that's when I noticed the black eyes of demon possession.

I'm afraid I only lasted up until Derek found another spirit chap called Sam who directed them to a room where some bloke called Joseph committed suicide. The magic subtitle appears again, and says that a bloke called Joseph did commit suicide in 1878. Before we switched channeles, I saw the previews begging us to stay, and to expect demon possession (Sweaty Psychic goes "Raaaaorr"), Yvette screaming, and Derek saying he feels a bit tired...

SEVEN AGES OF ROCK PT 2: ART ROCK

Mr P, the guitar geek, has promised to grumble in a separate post about Part one of Seven Ages of rock: apparently they didn't mention that Jimi was practised loads before he was hailed as The God of All Guitarists and...well, I stopped listening...

Anyway, I'm doing Art Rock because I was there. Kind of. My dad went to Floyd gigs and even worked for Nick Mason for a while (Mr Mason is known in our family as That Bastard Mason and loyalty compelled me to shout "Git!" every time he appeared on the screen. He didn't give me a summer job processing his royalty payments either. Git.). We had all the original Velvets' and a few Bowie albums, and my mum officially fancied Bryan Ferry. I also was at the iconic Wall gig at Earl's Court in 1981, so there.

Seven Ages of Rock is also great for playing our favourite TV game, called "'E's Dead". The concept is simple. You need at least two players. The first person to shout "'E's Dead" when a now-dead actor/musician appears on the screen scores a point. If challenged you must name the dead person before you can get your point. Tonight's scores were Sarah: 4, Mr P: 1.

We started with the Floyd in their drippy trippy phase of singing about bicycles and wet posh girls. The rather fine archive footage - seriously, old farts like me only watch these things for the archive footage - was spoiled by arty editing (how can you possibly out-farty the Floyd? Fools!) and updated inserts with clever clever effects. They actually managed to wheel all four surviving members of Pink Floyd, though not in the same room - that would have been fun - and the po-faced narrator managed to slot in a drummer joke ("four musicians and a drummer..."). They all said that yes, they were interested in pushing the boundaries of music, blah blah, and there were shots of them discussing chord changes in a studio, and Syd looking slightly embarrased on a stool while a 1960s BBC chap asked them why they had to play so loudly. More clever effects meant to illustrate the effect of LSD on an archive shot of Syd playing guitar, and a film of one of his lamer pre-breakdown songs that everybody apart from three emo teenagers in Wantage would prefer to forget.

"Meanwhile..." intones the narrator. "Syd's every move was being watched by a young singer from Bromley with funny eyes..." Cue the first bit of archive Bowie footage. According to this lot, Bowie had a novelty hit with Space Oddity, and then was cut adrift in the music scene..hang on, is The Laughing Gnome to be airbrushed from history altogether?

Over in New York, a young and pretty Lou Reed was thrown together with a not as young but very beautiful Nico, a grumpy John Cale and silent, long-suffering Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker. They tie Mo up in the name art. Nico sings flat. Andy Warhol looks a scream. John Cale appears to remember everything, while Lou purses his cat's arse mouth and claims not to recall if they actually play a psychiatrist's convention (cue shot of Edie Sedgewick - damn...missed that one - et al dancing with the Velvets in front of a group of very nervous psychiatrists). A clever bit of editing makes it look as if David Bowie is taking notes or something.

David returns to the UK, apparently, and comes up with Ziggy Stardust - a fictional amalgam of Syd, Jimi, and assorted other doomed heroes. A horribly overrated album follows, and lots of music journalists make lots of money from analysing the true meaning of Ziggy/Dark Side/Roxy Music.

The problem with this pseudo academic approach is that it forgets the most important aspect of these chosen groups. Do they rock, or do they not? Aged seven, I couldn't give a monkeys about pushing the barriers of performance. The big question was: could you dance to it? Did it groove? Floyd grooved (especially post-Syd, when they basically let Richard Wright build a groove, and sat on it for 20 minutes); Bowie grooved; Roxy grooved (before they went all lounge).

Genesis didn't. Peter Gabriel popped up with a neat goatee to explain that he felt impelled to take the Floyd levels of performance into a complete new universe of wankery, resulting in an experience that looked like a failed audition for Playaway. The rest of Genesis had enough self-knowledge to look slightly embarrassed.

We return to the Floyd, who are irritated that selling gazillions of albums not only means more Ferraris to buy, but more people to play to. Apparently The Wall was the concept album gig to end all concept album gigs. I just remember lots of inflatables, a dirty great wall being built, and Dave Gilmour doing the solo for Comfortably Numb on top of it, and not being able to speak for 24 hours afterwards.

Thank heavens for Punk. We recovered by playing our favourite DVD of Spinal Tap...that's a proper rock documentary.

SOUL BRITANNIA DRINKING GAME

Work in progress from me and Mr P.

1. Every time Robert Elms manages to shoehorn trousers into an examination of the social impact of post-war immigration policy and its impact on British society = ONE FINGER
   
2. Every time Van Morrison smiles, either in archive or on present-day footage = REST OF GLASS